While the municipality of Grey Highlands is in the midst of a poll to better understand resident's preferred speed in area hamlets and villages, Grey County staff want to move forward.
“We are going to lower the speed limit through Eugenia and we're going to do some studies to see how that impacts speed,” said Matt Marck, engineering manager of Transportation Services for Grey County during a committee of the whole meeting held last week.
County staff are proposing an amendment to bylaw 4788-13, which would see the existing speed posting of 50 km/h on Grey Road 13 through Eugenia in the Grey Highlands reduced to 40 km/h.
“We'll be putting up some radar devices to monitor the speed through there and then we're also proposing or investigating some traffic calming projects,” Marck said.
The county’s transportation services department is also recommending traffic calming measures be installed in Grey Highlands’ hamlet of Kimberly.
Pending council approval, Marck says the speed reduction measures will be installed and the transportation services department will begin collecting data from both Eugenia and Kimberly in order to evaluate which strategy is more effective.
At the same time, the municipality of Grey Highlands recently launched a public survey to gather public input on the possibility of reducing the speed limit in its hamlets and villages.
Despite the survey currently still accepting public input, Grey County council will be considering moving forward with the changes at the next council meeting, which is scheduled for Oct. 8.
Once Grey Highlands’ poll results are tallied, council members will make a decision in regards to lowering the speed limit in all of the municipality’s villages and hamlets.
Marck added that the county is also in the process of updating its speed policy and once updated, county and municipal roadways should function more succinctly.
“We actually have an update to our speed policy coming, which basically is going to state that if a municipality wants to lower speed limits within the boundaries in an urban area that the county would follow suit if requested, and also lower the speed limit within that urban area,” Marck stated.
